Making a playlist of the songs from their twenties often becomes an arduous process that takes more than a single evening. This article helps you manage the emotional weight of these tracks so you can build your collection effectively.
Feist came on next, that particular three-note drop, and my hands found the edge of the sink before I knew I was standing. The linoleum in that kitchen had a pattern of small brown diamonds and one of them near the stove was peeling up at the corner and I used to press it flat with my toe while I waited for the kettle. He had said the thing he said and I had turned to face the window so he couldn't see what my face was doing. Nineteen years and my knuckles had gone white on the porcelain. The tea was still there on the desk - cold, and the cursor still waited, and my chest had something in it that had apparently been keeping its bags packed this whole time.
The Wilco track sat at four and I moved it to nine and the whole playlist rearranged itself like a sentence I'd said wrong. I moved it back. Then to seven, where it sat for eleven minutes while I stared at the name of the album like it owed me something. I opened Notes and typed *the Wilco goes before the Rilo Kiley because that summer came first* and held my thumb over it for a long moment and then deleted it, and then typed it again - smaller somehow, the same words in the same white box. The tea ring on the desk had dried into a perfect circle and I kept putting my finger in the middle of it.
The Cursor at Midnight
The Sufjan track had her handwriting in the title field because I had typed it in myself once, years ago, so the name would come up when the song played in someone else's car. The jewel case had cracked along the spine and she'd wrapped a rubber band around it, which I still had - somewhere, in the same drawer where I kept the charger for a phone I no longer owned. I clicked add and the playlist closed and I sat with my hands in my lap like I was waiting for a verdict. Then I clicked the three dots and removed it and the slot where it had been was just blank gray, a small rectangle of nothing, and I stared at it the way you stare at a space on a shelf where a thing used to be. The rubber band was in the drawer.
The clock on the microwave said 2:04 and I pressed play and Conor Oberst's voice came through the speaker and I closed the lid after three seconds and the hinge made its small click and then there was just the refrigerator and the rubber band in the drawer and the dried ring on the desk and my own breathing. The laptop sat there, warm under my palm - forty-seven songs folded up inside it like a letter I'd addressed and stamped and then kept. Outside a car passed and its headlights moved across the ceiling and were gone. I pulled my sleeve down over my hand and pressed it flat against the lid. The tea ring was still there in the morning.
The Cracked Jewel Case
The box was the kind that once held reams of printer paper, and it had moved with me three times without ever being unpacked. The jewel case was near the bottom, under a water bill from an apartment I hadn't lived in since Obama's first term. I lifted it out and the rubber band was still on it, dried to a faint gray, and it broke the moment I touched it. I carried the case to the desk and set it next to the laptop - the cracked spine facing me, and then I went and made tea.
The insert booklet had slipped halfway out of the case, and I pushed it back in with one finger and then pulled it out again and unfolded it on the desk beside the cold mug. Her handwriting was in the margin next to track six, just an asterisk and the word *yes*, in blue ballpoint - pressed hard enough that the paper had gone waxy. I had no memory of lending it to her or getting it back, which meant one of us had done something ordinary and the other had let it mean something, and I couldn't tell anymore which one had been me. I refolded the booklet along its original crease and slid it back into the case and closed the lid and sat there with my hands flat on the desk, the laptop on one side and the case on the other, both of them facing me. The tea was steeping and the string hung over the rim of the mug and the tag at the end of it turned slowly in some draft I couldn't feel.
I opened the laptop and the playlist was still there - all forty-seven tracks, and the cursor was sitting at the top of the title field where I had typed the word *twenties* and then, sometime in the last two days, changed it to *late* and then to nothing, so the field was just empty - a blank rectangle that the application was content to leave unnamed. I scrolled to the middle and moved the Rilo Kiley track up three slots and then down two and then back to where it had been, and the small arrows made no sound. The insert booklet was still on the desk, closed, and without meaning to I had set my mug on top of it, and when I lifted the mug there was a new ring - a pale ghost of the old one, slightly overlapping, the way one thing gets layered on top of another until you can't see where the first one ends. I looked at the title field for a long time and then typed the word *late* again and then sat with my hands in my lap and didn't press enter. The tag at the end of the tea string had stopped turning.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional, financial, medical - or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
